November 2010

"Health Reform Hits Main Street" is a short cartoon presented by the Kaiser Family Foundation that takes the 2,500 pages of the healthcare reform law and explains it in a simple and humorous way. While far from comprehensive, it does a nice job of outlining the issues we face.

Recent polls show that roughly half of Americans favor repealing some or all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), presumably because they believe the law will do little to lower the cost of healthcare. However, there are actually some elements of the law that may lead us to that end. Buried in the new law is millions of dollars for funding Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). In plain English, CER is a concept of paying for medical services that are proven cost effective. This article is a nice summary of a concept that holds real promise for reducing the cost of care.